Dapper Drake

One of the few good things about getting hurt is that I have some spare time again, time I've been using to upgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to Dapper. Actually, I didn't really upgrade so much as wipe the machine clean and install from CD.

I chose to go with Xubuntu instead of Ubuntu because it's even less resource hogging and I really like Xfce. Gnome and KDE are fine, I just prefer the zippy and clean Xfce.

As it turns out, Xubuntu is a very bare-bones distro. OpenOffice isn't installed by default, and neither are a lot of multimedia apps or games. I like that, as I can live without half the stuff my original Ubuntu installed, but I imagine a lot of people might feel differently about it. Of course, everything is still available in the repos.

Almost everything works well, but there are a few little hiccups here and there because Xfce 4.4 is still in beta. I occasionally run into issues with the panel that force me to kill and restart it, and that would trip up folks who are just starting with Linux. The right-click menu sometimes disappears, too. Still, it's a beta window manager atop a stable release, and I'm very pleased. The kinks aren't frustrating ones and I imagine they're quickly getting ironed out. And I love the new panel!

Larry is having some trouble, though, and I'm not sure how to help because I don't have the same issues. If you know your way around DHCP, maybe you can throw him a bone.